Today in history: sliced bread first sold

[Callalily]

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Sliced Bread First Sold

July 7, 1928

On Saturday July 7, 1928, a small bakery in Chillicothe, Missouri, had achieved what many bakers considered impossible: It sold the first loaf of sliced bread. Many bakers at the time believed bread went stale too quickly if sold sliced, but customers didn’t mind — in just 20 weeks, the bakery’s orders skyrocketed, reportedly increasing by 2000%. But that particular Saturday morning was nearly 16 years in the making for inventor Otto F. Rohwedder, who overcame skepticism, illness, and tragedy to create the bakery’s ingenious bread slicer.

Rohwedder began work on his slicer as a hobby in 1912, but fell ill with pneumonia three years later. With doctors giving him only one year to live, he sold his jewelry business but continued working on his passion project, a powerful, time-saving machine that could slice bread to a perfect, sandwich-ready width (at slightly less than half-an-inch). Rohwedder beat the doctors’ grim prognosis, and was ready to build his invention at a factory in Illinois when it caught fire in 1918, destroying his machine and all his blueprints. It took the inventor another decade to make the slicer that finally found its way to the Chillicothe Baking Company. Nearly a century later, sliced bread remains the invention by which all modern marvels are compared.

[Frustratedlady]

1. I remember when my mother came home from the grocery store and told Dad...

"They have sliced bread."

Dad asked, "How much extra do they charge for that?"

"Five cents."

Dad scoffed and said, "You can slice it for less than that."

I think he just didn't want to give up the home-baked bread.

[cyclonefence]

2. The greatest thing since...

I dunno--movable type?

[abqtommy]

3. K&R because a slice is nice.